My mother fed us onion tea for colds. Also warm vinegar and honey. She would smear a pink lotion, the name of which I've forgotten, on our chests and keep it on by taping an old (clean) diaper on top. Vicks Vap-o-rub went into the "steamer."

All of which cured us. In a a week or so we were well, just as we would have been without it all.

Fortunately for us, she didn't use some of the other, folklorist documented, "cures" from that part of the world. Stuff like washing your face in well-aged urine for acne, or coating your face with fresh cow manure for the same thing. We did use band-aids for cuts (although mercurochrome or tincture of iodine was used "to prevent lockjaw"). And when home remedies failed, there was the hospital -- where I was taken at age 12 with a fever of 104 degrees (F) and febrile hallucinations because of pneumonia.

Antibiotics cured what witch hazel rubs and such-like had failed to fix. I think that it was after that that the various teas, etc. started to fall from favor.

I think that the mind and body are a whole, and one influences the other. Many of the cures used -- antibiotics among them -- are derived from naturally-occuring substances. But when I needed hand surgery I went to a surgeon....